Eccentric Glamour by Simon Doonan

Author:Simon Doonan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

An exaggerated sense of occasion, or any sense of occasion, for that matter, will automatically impede your ability to have fun. Conversely, a well-cultivated obliviousness to the conventions of any occasion is guaranteed to up the fun quotient. When people ask me, “What are you wearing to [such and such event]? I’m not sure what to wear…,” I experience a strong desire to kill them. These whiny people, with their obsolete sense of appropriateness, are the Antichrist.

Because of their irrational and fun-destroying fear of being either overdressed or underdressed, they are attempting to create a world where, on any given occasion, all participants are uniformly attired.

I deplore this idea. The impulse to surround yourself with like-minded folk in like-minded frocks signifies the end of civilization. I want every social event to be like the happening in the movie Midnight Cowboy, or better yet, the party scene from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Rampant individuality are my buzzwords. If every social event were to showcase a fabulous smorgasbord of humanity—duchesses and drug addicts, artists and bankers—the world would be a more entertaining and therefore happier place.

And to the conformity freaks who are trying not to offend the great unseen fashion god in the sky, let me reassure you on this issue: Your concerns about dressing “appropriately” are totally misplaced. Nobody in his or her right mind really cares enough about what you are wearing to censure you. If there is such a person on the planet, then he or she—this self-appointed arbiter of “appropriateness”—deserves to be confronted with as many “inappropriate” transgressions as possible.

And what, while we’re on the subject, could possibly be more fun than encountering someone who is “inappropriately” dressed? A pink satin frock at a funeral, a tiara for a Monday morning meeting—these are a few of my favorite things.

Back in the 1980s there was a senior buyer at Barneys who had a reckless disregard for convention. She was an Existentialist of the first order. Every day I anticipated her arrival at work with jittering eagerness. One never knew what she was going to wear: a severe antique Chanel suit with a massive nineteenth-century bow on her head, a silk faille cocoon coat in slate gray with matching beaded ballet slippers. Hers was a delicious form of style schizophrenia. She would think nothing of wearing a floor-length ball gown to a nine a.m. store managers’ meeting.

She enjoyed dressing up, and everyone looked forward to seeing what her next outfit would be. It was fun. The idea of “work wear” or “career clothing” was repulsive to her, as it is to me.

(At this juncture, the pedants among you will be flicking back to the first chapter where I declared that professional women—MDs and lawyers in particular—must never wear wacky clothes, and accusing me of inconsistency. To you nit-pickers, I say: (1) The young lady in question was not a gastroenterologist, she was a fashion buyer, and (2) Stop being so pedantic.)

Retire Your Work Attire

London, 1978.

There I was, standing

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